Sylvana Simons

Football analyst Johan Derksen compared DENK politician Sylvana Simons to a monkey during a broadcast of Voetbal Inside on Monday night. While talking about RTL's decision to replace blackface Zwarte Piet with so-called Chimney Piet, he said that the only downside is that "hysterical miss Simons will run through the country as proud as a monkey", AD reports.

Some 400 people gathered on Amsterdam's Dam Square on Sunday afternoon for a peaceful protest titled Black Lives Matter. The demonstration was in protest against police violence in the United States, where two black Americans were killed by police bullets last week, but also to draw attention to Dutch victims of police brutality,

Sylvana Simons, the newest member of political party DENK, filed charges of racism with the police in The Hague. A video the party posted on their website shows Simons and party leader Tunahan Kuzu walking into the police station with a thick stack of papers.

Sylvana Simons is pressing charges against "the deluge of racist, sexist and discriminatory comments" directed at her after she joined political party DENK, she said in a statement the party released on Tuesday. By pressing charges, she wants to make clear that something "demonstrably wrong may never go unpunished" and that "fighting injustice begins with reporting it".

The Public Prosecutor plans to meet with new politician Sylvana Simons about the online racial abuse directed at her person. Amsterdam police chief Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg also called on her to press charges.